Startup journey: Iterate your way
Published by Tijana Momirov
That big goal that looks impossible turns into feasible steps once the roadmap is broken down. The big dark doubts turn into clearer vision after each mini mission accomplished. A firmer ground and/or smaller gap come into sight once we make the first step. And then the next one. It’s by iterating that we come a long way.
On a startup journey that goes for almost anything: from surveying each time a more niched sample of potential users to advancing from one investment round to the other. And also when planning your product dev somewhere in the middle of all that. Here is how we go about a product development iteration.
Iteration planning
Understand the business value of the features you are proposing: it’s not about how cool they are or how state of the art tech behind them is. The features in the early phase of the product need to speak the Unique Value Proposition and do it very loud.
Make sure you add the new feature to your existing storyboard to understand how it fits with what you already have developed, but also with what you already have proposed. Does its’ priority overwrite the highest priority feature you have lined up previously? Does it complement the UVP story you’ve been narrating so far and what exactly motivated you to consider it?
If in doubt, you can use a framework like RISK.
Once your new feature has its’ place on the storyboard, propagate it to the backlog within the respective structure and prioritization. Break it down further into stories and make sure each has its’ business value clear (if a story lacks a clear business value at this time, maybe it can be pushed for later down the road or it will simply get rendered obsolete with time) and specify clear acceptance criteria
Have the engineers break it all down to the technical subtasks and provide you with the technical feasibility, risks and effort estimation - make sure it can get compensated by the business value you are about to add to your product
Iteration Execution
Let the engineers do their magic
Prepare the demo invitees list. Depending on the phase of the product and the nature of the feature, you might invite different stakeholders and sometimes some beta users. Often people from your marketing and support team would get curious as well, and if feasible, they could join the demo and provide their feedback early.
Iteration Feedback Gathering
Demo session is good for the first impression feedback from different stakeholder
User Acceptance Testing in the staging environment is more structured and better documented method that should follow
User behavior analytics tools are a must - but only excel if the analysis is done thoroughly
Surveys - as long as you manage to offer good incentive and get the sufficient number of responses
Iteration Feedback Incorporation
Add, alter, re-prioritize features in the product backlog
If you feel lost - revise your lean canvas, connect again to your core idea, you UVP, the target audience you speak to and the competition you are running against
re-map your storyboard and start preparing for the next iteration
A very crucial tip: if you get a new idea, which you will for sure as new info and learnings are coming up, don’t keep adding it to the current iteration. Wrap that one up, launch it and let the feedback flow in, while you get busy with the next one. That’ll help you avoid the build trap and losing your way on this journey. Step by step, and you’re getting there. If you need any help, we have a CxO in Residence for each step of you way, book a free session here: https://linktr.ee/canopy_inresidence